The answer is yes! But some of the junk does serve a purpose to this day. According to the website space.com, the moon has a lot of junk on it, from a gold olive branch, a flag kit, numerous lunar orbiters, and a hammer and falcon feather. There are also dozens more pieces of lunar debris. The question is how much garbage is on our moon?

It is difficult to give an exact answer, but the moon’s trash would weigh up to 400,000 lbs on earth. That is kind of out of this world!  With several heavy objects such as five moon rangers, it wouldn’t take much to cause all that weight of trash on the moon’s surface.

Most of the moons litter was left by NASA astronauts who landed there between 1969 and 1972 while the Apollo program was still active. Other trash came from space-exploring agencies in various countries such as Russia, Japan, India, Europe and the USA.

While this space junk is cluttering the moon, most of the items did serve a purpose. For instance, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite studied the hydrogen and confirmed that Water is on the moon. Other objects left can help show how items weather on the surface of the moon.

Some objects are still being used, researches on Earth can ping a laser-range reflector on the moon to measure its distance between it and Earth. That is how we found out the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches a year.

While one mans trash is another mans treasure, this moon junk will help show how space travel has evolved over the years and showcase how, “One small step for main, made “one giant leap for mankind.”

For a full listing of the trash left on the moon, click here.